The new Simone Felice album Strangers (Simone’s second solo record) was recorded in the Catskill Mountains with guest artists The Felice Brothers, Leah Siegel, and Wesley Schultz and Jeremiah Fraites of The Lumineers.

Simone Felice is a founding member (lyricist, vocalist, drummer and guitarist) of internationally acclaimed artists The Felice Brothers and The Duke & The King. He has toured and worked with the likes as The Band’s Levon Helm, Conor Oberst and Bright Eyes, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, The Lumineers, Mumford & Sons, Rick Rubin, The Avett Brothers, and Old Crow Medicine Show. He has toured Australia a number of times, most recently in March 2013. I was fortunate to see The Felice Brothers at the 2013 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival last October in San Francisco and it was an inspired performance by Felice and the rest of the band.

In 2010 Simone underwent emergency open-heart surgery to correct the slow, degenerative effects of a childhood fever. It was this close brush with death, coupled with the need to tell his own story, which prompted him to walk the solo artist’s path. Strangers should continue his impressive career with his gift as a poet, song craftsman and visionary.

“Often times the word ‘poet’ is casually assigned to a songwriter, and all too often it is not true. Simone Felice is a poet to the core.” – Wesley Schultz of The Lumineers

“Dylan and Leonard Cohen are brought to mind, such is the depth of emotion wrought by Felice’s careful approach… Shows the power of music to lift your spirits and make your heart full – absolutely fantastic.”- BBC

“Each song somehow sounds like a classic, each live performance suggesting we are in the presence of a rare, fiery brilliance.” – The Guardian

“There is a boldness to Simone’s writing, the fierceness and fearlessness of complete honesty that pushes into places that simply take the breath away…some of his songs are so perfectly formed they sound like they might have been around forever… the best I have heard in a while, touching the hem of Dylan by way of Gordon Lightfoot…These songs are good enough to be sung by the whole world” –The Telegraph